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The influx of high-income foreign nationals and the housing market in a developing country: a case study of Suzhou Industrial Park, China

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Abstract

Increasingly globalising human and capital mobility has created new dynamics to the housing market. Foreign nationals, strengthened by inflows of foreign direct investment, have appeared in major Chinese cities. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the impact of foreign nationals on China’s housing market. By using a case study of Suzhou, this research investigates the following research questions: How are foreign nationals associated with housing price increases in a globalising city? Where and why these impacts have been felt? This research conducted a survey questionnaire with 508 expatriate foreign nationals and built housing price data sets in Suzhou. A consumer theory provides a framework to understand different housing consumption behaviours of heterogeneous socio-economic groups. Findings represent that expatriate foreign nationals played a key role in a high-end housing market due to their higher income levels and housing subsidies provided by their employer. They tended to form ethnic communities in a prime location to better access language-specific services and quality amenity facilities.

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Fig. 1
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Source: www.soufun.com and Suzhou Statistical Yearly Book

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Notes

  1. http://esf.suzhou.fang.com/house-a0277/.

  2. The prices on the website were sellers’ asking prices instead of transacted prices. There were no official data about housing prices and detailed transaction information in Suzhou. There might be subtle differences between price information on the commercial website and the market values, but this would not make a significant bias.

  3. RMB 10,000 was approximately USD 1600 in 2014.

  4. The average income was calculated using mid-values of each income band. The top income group (RMB 100,000 or more) chose RMB 150,000 for the average calculation.

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Acknowledgements

The early idea of this research was presented at Asian Real Estate Society (AsRES) Annual Conference in Bangalore, India in 2016, entitled “Foreign nationals and the housing market: A case study of Suzhou Industrial Park, China”. This research was supported by Jiangsu University Natural Science Research Programme (Reference No. 14KJB170020) and by the Academy of Korean Studies Grant (AKS-2016-R08). I would like to give thanks to anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. I would like to express my appreciation to Miss. Ting Wang and Mr. Yuyi Zhao for their assistance with data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Hyung Min Kim

  2. Department of Urban Planning and Design, Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China

    Hyung Min Kim

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Correspondence to Hyung Min Kim.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Fig. 6.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Rent and housing prices in the SIP. Note: the correlation coefficient is .54

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Appendix 2

See Fig. 7.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Housing subsidies and rent. Note: this graph used 361 responses that received housing subsidies. ‘0’ subsidy and No Answer responses were excluded. The correlation coefficient is .93

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Kim, H.M. The influx of high-income foreign nationals and the housing market in a developing country: a case study of Suzhou Industrial Park, China. J Hous and the Built Environ 33, 767–788 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-017-9585-y

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